Grant: CIHR Fellowship

As the Canadian population ages, a significant number of individuals will experience the onset of Alzheimer's disease (AD), leading to major impairments in memory, cognition and language. However, we currently have a poor understanding of how the onset of AD affects our brain's ability to perform complex, real-world tasks. This makes it difficult to design tests to identify and assist at-risk individuals. A key example is driving, which is an essential activity for maintaining independence, social connection, and livelihood. Individuals with early AD at higher risk for motor-vehicle, but there are no agreed-upon tests of driving fitness for older adults. In order to develop sensitive assessments of driving ability, we must first identify the brain areas that are related to driving, in both healthy and AD populations. To address this issue, I will recruit individuals from three groups: (1) healthy older adults, (2) patients with mild cognitive impairments (MCI) that often precede AD, and (3) AD patients that are still able to drive. I will use functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity in participants, while they perform a set of simulated driving tasks. These results will be used to identify brain areas that are associated with driving ability, and to determine if these areas change between healthy and cognitively impaired cohorts. These findings will determine what brain areas are essential for driving performance, and if different brain areas should be tested across healthy, MCI and AD groups. These findings will help to better understand how changes in brain function due to AD affect the ability to perform complex, real-world tasks. This research will also help to develop cognitive assessment tools of driving capability, in order to better identify and assist at-risk older individuals.